Anne Tyler
Author of The Accidental Tourist
About the Author
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 25, 1941. She graduated from Duke University at the age of 19 and completed graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. Before becoming a full-time author, she worked as a librarian and bibliographer. Her first novel, If Morning show more Ever Comes, was published in 1964. Her other works include Saint Maybe, Back When We Were Grownups, Digging to America, Noah's Compass, The Beginner's Goodbye, A Spool of Blue Thread, and Vinegar Girl. She has won several awards including the PEN Faulkner Award in 1983 for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, the 1985 National Book Critics Circle Award for The Accidental Tourist, and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons. The Accidental Tourist was adapted into a 1988 movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. In 2018 her title, Clock Dance, made the bestsellers list. (Bowker Author Biography) Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. "Back When We Were Grownups" is her 15th novel; her 11th, "Breathing Lessons", won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland. (Publisher Provided) show less
Works by Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler Omnibus: The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons, Searching for Caleb (1991) 133 copies, 2 reviews
Anne Tyler Omnibus: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Morgan's Passing, The Tin Can Tree, If Morning Ever Comes (1990) 108 copies, 1 review
Anne Tyler: Three Complete Novels: A Patchwork Planet * Ladder of Years * Saint Maybe (2001) 56 copies, 1 review
Best of the South: From the Second Decade of New Stories from the South (2005) — Selected and Introduced by — 52 copies
Anne Tyler Omnibus: Breathing Lessons, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Accidental Tourist (1990) 19 copies
Anne Tyler Omnibus: Earthly Possessions, Morgan's Passing, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1991) 15 copies
Anne Tyler Omnibus: The Accidental Tourist, Back When We Were Grownups, Breathing Lessons, A Ptchwork Planet (1986) 4 copies
Penelope Fitzgerald 1 copy
Sininen lanka 1 copy
Sattuman oikusta 1 copy
Rare ANNE TYLER New Collection Three Complete Novels the Accidental Tourist 1st ed [Hardcover] Tyler, Anne (1991) 1 copy
Toujours paartir 1 copy
Beautiful Lies 1 copy
When We Were Grownups 1 copy
Associated Works
The Writer on Her Work, Volume I: Contemporary Women Writers Reflect on their Art and Situation (1980) — Contributor — 199 copies, 1 review
This Is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Work (2004) — Contributor — 175 copies, 3 reviews
Reader's Digest Select Editions 2001 v05 #257: The Ice Child / The Blue Nowhere / Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas / Back When We Were Grownups (2001) 43 copies
The Accidental Tourist (abridged|Penguin Readers, level 3) (1999) — Original novel — 20 copies, 2 reviews
Best in Books: Sea Jade, Kennedy without Tears, If Morning Ever Comes, The Ziegfeld's Girl, A Vanishing America (1965) — Contributor — 2 copies
Det Bästas Bokval (2004) vol 232: Besökaren; Det sista löftet; Ord mot ord; Förr när vi var vuxna (2004) — Author — 2 copies
O ADVOGADO / CAMINHOS PERDIDOS / CORRENDO ÀS CEGAS / UM RAIO DE SOL — Author — 2 copies
Zabójcza pamięć | Kiedy byliśmy dorośli | Promień światła | Po omacku (Reader's Digest) (2002) — Author — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1941-10-25
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Duke University
Columbia University (Russian studies) - Occupations
- librarian
bibliographer
novelist
short story writer - Organizations
- American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature, 1983)
- Awards and honors
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award (Literature ∙ 1977)
Man Booker International Prize Finalist (2011) - Agent
- Diarmuid Russell (Russell and Volkening)
Timothy Seldes - Relationships
- Modarressi, Taghi (husband)
Modarressi, Mitra (daughter)
Jones, Judith (editor) - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
- Places of residence
- Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Baltimore, Maryland, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Discussions
January 2019: Anne Tyler in Monthly Author Reads (August 2021)
Anne Tyler: American Author Challenge 2016 in 75 Books Challenge for 2016 (May 2016)
Detached woman works for family, brother commits suicide, but a happy ending. in Name that Book (October 2011)
Fiction- "Perfect" wife and mom walks away from family during beach vacation and begins a completely in Name that Book (September 2010)
Reviews
I loved this book. It grapples with the difference between who you believe yourself to be and the self you present to others, and makes a strong case that the self you present (through your actions) is actually more real. The main character perceives herself as a shy, intelligent studious girl, who married and took on a step-family who expected her to be constantly cheerful, outgoing and socially adept. After she's widowed and her family is grown, she needs to decide if that who she wants to show more continue to be, or if she wants to change.
My favorite parts of this book were her interior dialogs about how much effort it requires to cheerfully take care of other people, and listen, and appreciate them, and yet how worthwhile it is to do it. show less
My favorite parts of this book were her interior dialogs about how much effort it requires to cheerfully take care of other people, and listen, and appreciate them, and yet how worthwhile it is to do it. show less
Macon and his wife Sarah have suffered the recent tragic passing of their son, their only child. Macon deals by putting away all thoughts and feelings, building an emotional barrier around him that shuts out his wife. Their separation and his new interactions with others cause him to re-evaluate how well his approach has worked and what alternatives there are, and whether reconciliation with his wife is even possible.
It's a study of loss, but also a study of marriage and what a marriage show more must be founded on in order to endure. When selecting your life partner is it more important to love who you are with them than how much you love that person? I'd like to think, or at least hope, that the first produces the second but it's a profound question that Anne Tyler puts before us. Our character and sense of identity are inevitably influenced by who we expose ourselves to and what we permit to reach us. Anyone and anything can be excluded with effort, but at what cost - and when have we lost sight of, or lost the ability to define, our true selves?
The true magic of this novel is that it's all so simply told, written in language that's as clear as a bell, and yet still places such deep and sometimes troubling considerations in front the reader. Macon is a character of remarkable depth, demonstrating multiple sides that in lesser hands would appear contradictory but here serve to make him more human. This novel has earned its accolades. show less
It's a study of loss, but also a study of marriage and what a marriage show more must be founded on in order to endure. When selecting your life partner is it more important to love who you are with them than how much you love that person? I'd like to think, or at least hope, that the first produces the second but it's a profound question that Anne Tyler puts before us. Our character and sense of identity are inevitably influenced by who we expose ourselves to and what we permit to reach us. Anyone and anything can be excluded with effort, but at what cost - and when have we lost sight of, or lost the ability to define, our true selves?
The true magic of this novel is that it's all so simply told, written in language that's as clear as a bell, and yet still places such deep and sometimes troubling considerations in front the reader. Macon is a character of remarkable depth, demonstrating multiple sides that in lesser hands would appear contradictory but here serve to make him more human. This novel has earned its accolades. show less
"In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job." Well, now, you can't get much more timely than this. I'm a bit older than Liam, and so was my husband when the same thing happened to him, but still at a point in life when it leaves you wondering "Am I really finished with work? Am I ready to retire? Do I have other options?" Liam hasn't set the world on fire, to say the least, and now he's thinking he might just relax into his rocking chair with his books and wait for the show more end. Except that his rocking chair isn't all that comfortable, as it turns out. And everyone keeps asking him what he’s going to do “next”. And the first night he spends in his new, cheaper apartment he forgets to lock the patio door, and gets knocked out by an opportunistic burglar. (Not such a great opportunity for the burglar, either---Liam doesn't own one thing worth stealing.) He wakes up in the hospital with a bandaged head and no memory of anything past settling comfortably into his tightly made bed. He is much more disturbed by the lack of memory than by any other aspect of the event, a fact which neither his family, his doctor nor his friend Bundy seem to grasp. They all feel he should be grateful not to have a memory of being assaulted in his own apartment, but to Liam it’s an ongoing source of frustration. There isn’t a lot of plot in this novel; Tyler gives us life’s mundane moments, touched with a bit of short-lived excitement and a lot of introspection on the fly. As she has done before, (in The Accidental Tourist, for example) she creates a slightly disconnected male character who has functioned well enough up to a point in his life, but seems to have no inner core of support when life stops being routine, and who finds himself drawn to a woman whose appeal is that she fits no familiar pattern. Unfortunately, he rather pins his hopes for recovering his memory and turning his life around on this woman, who clearly isn’t wrapped too tightly at the core herself. I almost always enjoy Anne Tyler’s characters, even when I want to give them a good shake and a swift kick in the butt. This time was no exception.
Review written in January 2016 show less
Review written in January 2016 show less
Noting the relationship between my goodreads friends and acquaintances, and Anne Tyler makes me wonder. Is Jane Austen some sort of token? We have to like somebody who writes about domesticity, so...
Is that it? Tyler does indeed write about domesticity. Ordinary people living ordinary lives, mostly in their very ordinary houses. She does this fantastically well and I can't really imagine a more important job a writer could have.
But maybe it is despised precisely for being the things I think show more are so important. I am astonished by how many people I think should know better who have never read anything by Tyler. She describes ordinary cares and heart break, ordinary despair and ordinary hope with a light touch that makes you realise that she loves all that she brings to the page. She is all-knowing and all-understanding with a modesty that makes her slip by unnoticed by those that need literature to be brash, experimental, obscure or difficult. I am tempted to define the thing people call literature, whilst scorning that which they see as not falling into the genre, as something that IS putdownable. If that is so, then Tyler most dismally fails to make the grade. What a relief.
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I've given up trying to understand why it is that the amount that this author moves me is inversely proportioned to what I have to say about her. I have no idea how to do justice to her way of making ordinary failed people quicken one's heart.
Let me quote a little instead.
Matthew, whose mother is a dreadful piece of work, asked if Elizabeth finds her hard to put up with.
And there I sat, as I read this, in my quite small life, and resolved to dress better. Though I rather think I draw the line at holding my tummy in.
Matthew recalls his brother, Tim, who shot himself as Elizabeth attempted to take away the gun - well, I think it was all his own work.
I am appalled to report that I once had to defend Anne Tyler against the charge that she was like Jane Austen. P-leeassse. It isn't just that Austen is a vastly inferior writer technically, and a less careful observer of life, but Austen is a social critic, a judge. She has an opinion which is the whole point of what she does. Tyler couldn't be more the opposite, I don't think I've ever read anything as moving as Tyler, which never gives you the least teensiest inkling into what the author thinks. She strikes me as God-like in this sense and more so than any writer I've read. Isn't that something? show less
Is that it? Tyler does indeed write about domesticity. Ordinary people living ordinary lives, mostly in their very ordinary houses. She does this fantastically well and I can't really imagine a more important job a writer could have.
But maybe it is despised precisely for being the things I think show more are so important. I am astonished by how many people I think should know better who have never read anything by Tyler. She describes ordinary cares and heart break, ordinary despair and ordinary hope with a light touch that makes you realise that she loves all that she brings to the page. She is all-knowing and all-understanding with a modesty that makes her slip by unnoticed by those that need literature to be brash, experimental, obscure or difficult. I am tempted to define the thing people call literature, whilst scorning that which they see as not falling into the genre, as something that IS putdownable. If that is so, then Tyler most dismally fails to make the grade. What a relief.
---------------------
I've given up trying to understand why it is that the amount that this author moves me is inversely proportioned to what I have to say about her. I have no idea how to do justice to her way of making ordinary failed people quicken one's heart.
Let me quote a little instead.
Matthew, whose mother is a dreadful piece of work, asked if Elizabeth finds her hard to put up with.
'No, I like her,' she said. 'Think what a small life she has, but she still dresses up every day and holds her stomach in. Isn't that something?'
And there I sat, as I read this, in my quite small life, and resolved to dress better. Though I rather think I draw the line at holding my tummy in.
Matthew recalls his brother, Tim, who shot himself as Elizabeth attempted to take away the gun - well, I think it was all his own work.
Then a new picture slid in, clicking up from the back of his head: Timothy quarreling with Elizabeth. Only what was it about? Had she broken a date? Refused one? Shown up late for something? All he remembered was the it had happened on the sunporch, over the noise of a TV western. 'If you persist,' Timothy said, 'in seeing life as some kind of gimmicky guided tour where everyone signs up for a surprise destination -' and Elizabeth said, 'What?' Seeing what?' 'Life,' said Timothy, and Elizabeth said, 'Oh, life,' and smiled as fondly and happily as if he had mentioned her favourite acquaintance. Timothy stopped speaking, and his face took on a puzzled look. Wispy lines crossed his forehead. And Matthew, listening from across the room, had thought: It isn't Timothy she loves, then. He hadn't bothered wondering how he reached that conclusion. He sat before the television watching Marshall Dillion, holding his happiness close to his chest and forgetting, for once, all the qualities in Timothy that were hard to take....He forgot them again now, and with them the picture of Timothy triumphantly cocking his pistol and laughing in his family's face. All he saw was that puckered, defeated forehead. He cleared his throat. He felt burdened by new sorrows that he regretted having invited.
I am appalled to report that I once had to defend Anne Tyler against the charge that she was like Jane Austen. P-leeassse. It isn't just that Austen is a vastly inferior writer technically, and a less careful observer of life, but Austen is a social critic, a judge. She has an opinion which is the whole point of what she does. Tyler couldn't be more the opposite, I don't think I've ever read anything as moving as Tyler, which never gives you the least teensiest inkling into what the author thinks. She strikes me as God-like in this sense and more so than any writer I've read. Isn't that something? show less
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 63
- Also by
- 21
- Members
- 56,085
- Popularity
- #262
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 1,945
- ISBNs
- 1,233
- Languages
- 27
- Favorited
- 278
